A long, slow dance

In which our Hero is scaled, nearly bailed, and something else that rhymes but means really proud of his Mouse.

Hung out with Kung Fu on Friday night. His daughter announced, as I came through the door, “I’m shy!” which I can totally respect. Her much littler brother also yelled “I’m shy!” as he plowed into my legs in a hug.

He continued to be shy for most of the night. Kung Fu was sitting and asked, “You want to sit in my lap?” and the kid demurred. “No! I want that!” pointing at me and climbed into my lap. And later, despite the fact that I was on a stool, he suddenly started climbing it, and me, once again ending up perched on me.

Want to know something funny… I’m always a little startled when someone else’s kid latches on to me. I mean, the family kids start out spending time in my arms, so it’s not such a shock that they’d be used to physical interactions but when it’s someone else’s kid… On the one hand, we all play. On the other hand, I’m not family, I don’t want the kid’s parents worrying about that weirdo being near their babies.

It’s only a brief moment of cognitive dissonance. And then it’s just another kid to keep more or less upright and definitely away from corners and the unrelenting embrace of gravity.

(Actually, that’s exactly it. The anxiety feeling is a boundary being pressured and it doesn’t go away till I’ve reclassified the kid from being “My friend’s kid” to “One of mine.” Hey, I’ve figured it out. Yay!)

My Mouse invited me to see her dance. My Mouse, winner of some mighty prestigious academic awards, scholarship student, high-90’s student, admitted to an advanced program at least a year before most students are considered, and, I discovered, dancer. She’s dancing with a cultural group on campus.

Still a dancer, I should say. She’s been doing a dance style since she was pretty small, and I have pictures of her and her baby sister dancing for an event back when she was 11 or 12. But it’s been about that long since I saw her dance, and I was startled that she was pursuing dance while dealing with a degree, and then startled that she’d want to invite me to see her perform. I’m not a huge dance enthusiast but I can go to a recital thing to see what she’s up to.

Except that there are tickets. Oh. It’s at an arena. Um. Well, that’s unexpected but still, okay. And it turns out to be a part of a multi day culture event. Umm… well, I guess I can stomach that.

And then I find out that it runs around 5 hours. 5 hours of cultural event and music and dancing as various universities compete. Disbelieving I call the Mouse to confirm. And point out that one time they wanted me to watch a Bollywood movie with them and how I couldn’t make it 10 minutes before I started making fun. I’m sorry, movie musicals bore me. 5 hours? That ratio of substance to suffering seems way off.

In the end, I took a chance and asked her to call me when she knew she’d be on. Which meant that if she was on early, I was going to miss out, but I just couldn’t do take that much dance, even to watch my cousin. And luckily she was on after the intermission. So I went.

And it was boring. Dreadfully boring. Here’s my trouble with dancing, I have yet to get a real sense of the connection between visible motion and the beat. And don’t get me wrong, I have a bucketload of musical training and knowledge, so I get the beat, and I get syncopy. But once it stops being “step” on the beat and starts being “flex” on the beat then suddenly what I’m seeing are effects without feeling or understanding the actual cause.

Some of it is legitimately my lack of understanding. Some of it is the skill level of kids dancing in between their classes. The groups were beautiful and young, they were energetic and focused. They performed moderately well, and I only saw a few mistakes over the course of the show. More I saw dancers out of sync and I think that’s part of what really messed up my sense of what was going on. Later, there was a pair dancing just to the music on the side as they were waiting for someone to take the stage, and those two you could see as a unit.

It was loud, very loud. I put in the earphones from my ipod and that seemed to give me just enough protection that I wasn’t too uncomfortable though I was still tired.

And did I mention it was boring? Between the students and the awards they brought in some performer who I guess from the crowd reaction is very well known in those circles but to me it was someone I didn’t understand singing music that I didn’t understand. Again, technology saved me as I read a book while I waited for the actual awards.

She didn’t win any. Her team got trounced with the same 3 schools winning over and over again. And I didn’t see the winning performances but I have to honestly say that the other teams had better, more clever costumes, and more creative sets and yes, even dance numbers that I responded better to.

But she was really great. She herself, not her team. She was clearly superlative in that group, and I’m guessing they thought so too since she was one of the leads instead of part of the chorus. Her dancing I could actually use to follow what the rest of her team should have been doing.

Her team was okay. They weren’t all that well in time, but made no glaring mistakes. Mostly I was just confused as all hell by the storyline they were attempting to use to unite all their pieces. But then I was also baffled by the Casino Royale inspired number another school did, and that should have been easy so… probably it was just me.

Despite the boredom for most of it, it just made me happy to see my cousin dancing. I was so proud of her, just to see her doing this thing. I was proud of the young woman on the stage and I was thinking of the little girl dancing and the tangle of arms and legs of a baby Mouse singing to her toes. She was beautiful.